Playwrights submitted their work to the archon, who himself selected three: to each he was said to “give a chorus”. The applications were many, and distinguished poets sometimes failed to “receive a chorus”. The poet’s business was not only to write the play and the music, (but in early times) to train actors and chorus. Near the end of the fifth century B.C. it became the practice to employ an expert trainer. Occasionally the poet caused some other person to “produce” the play. This was frequently done by Aristophanes, and we hear that Iophon competed with tragedies written by his father Sophocles.
The name “choregus” means “chorus-leader,” but the choregus actually had quite other functions. He was a rich citizen who as a “liturgy” or public service bore all the special cost of the performance. To each choregus a flute-player was allotted, and it seems likely that the poet too was regarded as assigned to the choregus rather than the latter to the poet. The mounting of plays, which depended on the choregus, greatly influenced the audience, and their expressed opinion cannot but have had weight with the ten judges.[170] The wealthy Nicias, for example, obtained success for every tetralogy which he mounted.[171]
The third person with whom the archon concerned himself was the “protagonist” (the chief actor)—after the middle of the fifth century; before then it appears that poets chose their protagonists. In the middle of the fifth century a protagonist was selected by the archon and one assigned to each tragic poet by lot. (The chief actor provided his subordinates himself.) This change came at about the time when three actors were regularly employed in each tragedy and when the contests in acting were instituted; a prize for acting was awarded, and the successful actor had the right to perform the following year. As the importance of the actor increased—Aristotle tells us that in his time the success of a play depended more upon the actor than upon the poet[172]—it was considered unfair that one poet should have the best performer for all his plays. In the middle of the fourth century the arrangement was introduced that each protagonist should play in one tragedy only of each poet.
Each dramatist competed with a tetralogy[173] (that is, “four works”) consisting of three tragedies and a satyric play, and the claims of these three tetralogies were decided by five[174] judges. Some days before the competition began, the Council of the State and the choregi selected a number of names from each of the ten tribes. These names were sealed up in urns, which were produced at the opening of the festival. The archon drew one name from each urn, and the ten citizens so selected were sworn as judges and given special seats. After the conclusion of the performances each of the ten gave his verdict on a tablet, and five of these were drawn by the archon at random; these five judgments gave the award. In this method the principle of democratic equality and the necessity to rely on expert opinion were well combined. When the votes had been collected, a herald proclaimed the name of the successful poet and of his choregus, who were crowned with ivy (a plant always associated with Dionysus). There is no evidence that a dramatic choregus was given any further reward: the prize of a tripod was only for dithyramb. The poet received, tradition said, a goat[175] in early times; after the State-supervision began, a sum of money from public funds was paid to each of the competitors. Records of the results were inscribed upon tablets and set up both by the victorious choregi and by the State. It is from these, directly or indirectly, that our knowledge of the facts is obtained; directly, because such inscriptions have been discovered in Athens, indirectly, because they were the basis of written works on the subject. Aristotle wrote a book called Didascaliæ (διδασκαλίαι), that is, “Dramatic Productions”; though it is lost, later works were based upon it, and it is from these that the Greek “Arguments” to the existing plays are derived.
IV. The Mounting of a Tragedy
Scenery was painted on canvas or boards and attached to the front of the buildings. In satyric drama it appears to have varied little—a wild district with trees, rocks, and a cave. Tragedy generally employed a temple or palace-front, though even in the extant thirty-two there are exceptions—the rock of Prometheus, the tent of Ajax, the cave of Philoctetes, and so forth. In a façade there were three doors, corresponding to the three permanent doors in the buildings; when a cave or tent was depicted, its opening was in front of the central door. Statues were placed before the temple or palace—those of the deities, for instance, in the Agamemnon to whom the Herald utters his magnificent address. Individuality would be given to a temple by the statue of a particular god. Scene-painting was probably not very artistic or scrupulous of details. We never read any praise of splendid theatrical scenery such as is familiar to-day; and clever lighting effects were of course out of the question when all was performed in the daylight. Here and there the persons allude to the landscape, as in Sophocles’ Electra, where the aged attendant of Orestes points out to the prince striking features of the Argolid plain. Such things were mostly left to the imagination of the audience, like the forest of Arden and the squares of Verona or Venice in Shakespeare. Undoubtedly, a Greek tragedy provided a beautiful spectacle, but this resulted from the costumes, poses, and grouping of actors and chorus.
Change of scene was rarely needed in tragedy; the peculiar arrangements of comedy do not concern us. Only two extant tragedies need it. In the Eumenides of Æschylus the change from the temple of Apollo at Delphi to Athena’s temple in Athens is vital to the plot but need not have caused much trouble; probably convention was satisfied by changing the statue. In Ajax the scene shifts from that hero’s tent to a deserted part of the sea-shore; no doubt the tent was simply removed. One reason against change of scene was the continuous presence of the chorus; when the playwright found he must shift his locality the chorus were compelled to retire and reappear. We read[176] of a permanent appliance by which scenery could be altered; there is, however, no evidence that it was known in the great age of Athenian drama. This consisted of the periacti (περίακτοι). At each end of the scene stood wooden triangular prisms standing on their ends and revolving in sockets, so arranged that one of the narrow oblong sides continued the picture. A different subject was painted on each side. A twist given to either marked a change of place; the alteration of one periactus meant a change of locality within the same region, while the alteration of both meant a complete change of district. Thus, had this contrivance been used in the fifth century, one periactus would have been moved in the Ajax, both in the Eumenides. Another and stranger use of this contrivance is mentioned by Pollux: “it introduces sea-gods and everything which is too heavy for the machine”. We shall return to this when we come to the “eccyclema” and the “machine”. No curtain is known for the classical age.
Stage-properties were few and for the most part simple. Much the most important was the tomb of some great person; that of Darius in the Persæ, and of Agamemnon in the Choephorœ, are fundamental to the plot, and there are many other examples.[177] Statues have already been mentioned. The spaciousness of the orchestra made it easy to introduce chariots and horses, as in Agamemnon, Euripides’ Electra and Iphigenia at Aulis.
Various contrivances were employed to permit the appearance of actors in circumstances where they could not simply enter the orchestra or logeion. We need not dwell upon certain quaint machinery which it is fairly certain was not used in the great age—“Charon’s steps,” by which ghosts ascended, the “anapiesma” which brought up river-gods and Furies, the “stropheion” which showed heroes in heaven and violent deaths, the “hemicyclion” by which the spectators were given a view of remote cities or of men swimming, the “bronteion,” or thunder machine, consisting of a sheet of metal and sacks of stones to throw thereon, the “ceraunoscopeion” or lightning machine, a black plank with a flash painted upon it, which was shot across the stage. In the fifth century the theatrical contrivances amounted to four—the distegia, the theologeion, the “machine,” and the eccyclema.
The distegia was employed when human beings showed themselves above the level of the “stage,” for example on a roof or cliff. Such appearances are not common—the watchman (Agamemnon), Antigone and her nurse (Phœnissæ), Orestes and Pylades (Orestes), Evadne (Euripidean Supplices), are all the occasions in existing tragedy; comedy supplies a few more. Probably it was “a projecting balcony or upper story, which might be introduced when required”;[178] the word appears to mean “second story”. The arrangement would then correspond closely to the gallery used at the back of the Elizabethan stage.